Media for the peace movement in Maine and the world

Menu

Sometimes part of resistance is–you absorb the suffering. Gandhi thinks we all have this potential for good. So you’re always reaching out, even to the oppressor. And sometimes when you don’t strike back, he thinks, it de-centers the other, it brings shame to the other. It’s hard for them to be violent toward you when you don’t respond in that kind of causal way…. Some of his techniques don’t work, he admits…. He had many campaigns, he called them off…. But for Gandhi, to be really non-violent in the full sense, requires a lot of self-discipline, it requires a lot of courage…. Because non-violence for Gandhi is not passivity…. [Passivity] used to really disturb him…. If the difference is [between] passivity and cowardice or being violent and brave, in a principled way, better to be violent, Gandhi always said. But the highest form, that requires the most courage, is non-violent resistance. –Doug Allen

My friend Doug Allen is well represented on this site. Given the recent conflict situations in Palestine, Iraq, and Syria, there is much discussion about religious-based oppression and violence. Media these days bristles with discussions spearheaded by statements strongly critical of Islam made by figures such as entertainer Bill Maher and neurophilosopher Sam Harris. What can we learn from Gandhi that can help us alleviate conflicts like these today?

On January 31, 2008, just one day after the 60th anniversary of Gandhi’s assassination, Doug gave a talk, “60 Years after the Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi (Jan. 30, 1948): The Relevance of Gandhi’s Philosophy for Today’s World.” I am here reposting the 70-minute talk and q & a (I can be it heard asking a question about the India-U.S. nuclear deal made during the George W. Bush Administration with broad support of the Democrats).

Portrait of Russell Libby by Robert Shetterly, from the Americans Who Tell The Truth collection.

Word has reached peacecast.us that Russell Libby, Executive Director of MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association), died today at the age of 56. In his memory, I am re-posting the 26-minute talk he gave on Organic Agriculture in Maine that I recorded Saturday October 15, 2005 at the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine’s 16th annual Harvest Supper in Bangor. This is an excellent talk covering a lot of ground in a short time.

I recorded this talk for the University of Maine Thursday Controversy Series 3 1/2 years ago. For a very challenging current interview featuring both Cheri Honkala and the Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein, see the current episode of [Bill] Moyers & Company.

Two important 10th anniversaries have passed this fall. The first of course was that of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, along with the tragically failed attack ending in Pennsylvania. The second is that of the U.S.-Afghan War, dating from early October 2001 and still running hard all these years later, now the longest full-blown U.S. conflict in history. In May of this year, the un-convicted mastermind of the operations, Osama bin Laden, was killed by U.S. special forces in Pakistan. Doug Allen, in this just-over-one-hour audio podcast (including questions and answers), provides critical peace-movement perspective on these events.

Doug Allen has served on the faculty in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Maine since 1974. He is a scholar of the phenomenology of religion, and has written and spoken extensively on the application of Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy to today’s struggles of violence, war, and peace.

Most recently Doug is the author of the new volume just out from Reaktion Books and the University of Chicago Press, Mahatma Gandhi, a new perspective on Gandhi, which allows us to rethink our basic values and priorities. Please download a flyer for the book with an order form HERE, or visit press.uchicago.edu for more information.

Doug spoke October 6, 2011 at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus in Orono as part of the Fall 2011 Socialist and Marxist Studies Thursday series. The main part of the full title of Doug’s talk, Bring Our War $$ Home: 9/11, the Afghanistan War, and the Killing of Osama Bin Laden comes from a project developed in Maine last year by Bruce Gagnon of space4peace.org, the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine and many others. It has broadly been adopted by diverse groups, from Code Pink to the U.S. Conference of mayors. For more information, please visit bringourwardollarshome.org.

In November 2009, Mike gave a well-attended talk at the Memorial Union on the U Maine campus entitled Environmental Justice: Sharing the Burdens of Climate Change. Video of that talk has been available HERE.

In this post I am including from the archives an mp3 audio version of the talk and providing THIS LINK (.doc format) to Mike’s original text that was the basis for the talk & newly published chapter. Also, slides used in the talk are of this date still accessible HERE (pdf).

This past Friday, Wikileaks released the Iraq War Logs. This voluminous collection of reports from the field by U.S. occupation troops tells a grisly story of destruction, torture, and death normally shrouded from the public behind the wall of Pentagon lies and propaganda.

Long before Wikileaks sources provided the confirming documents, independent journalist Dahr Jamail was reporting on the horror of the U.S. war on Iraq, telling the truth about the terror and carnage to anyone who would listen. On September 28, 2006 at 12:30 pm, Dahr Jamail spoke in a crowded room at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine Orono campus. It is this four-year-old podcast I am re-posting here. You should be able to recognize from Dahr’s talk exactly the picture of U.S.-occupation-generated human tragedy and death squad killing now detailed from within by the newly-released material.

Many attempts were made to justify the invasion of Iraq, but one of the most frequently and cynically used was that, irrespective of the absence of weapons of mass destruction, putting an end to the barbarities of Saddam Hussein’s regime was a moral imperative. Well, now there is chapter and verse, from ringside seats, on the systematic use of torture by the Iraqi government that the US installed in Saddam’s place. The worst practices of Saddam’s regime did not apparently die with him, and whereas numerous logs show members of the coalition making genuine attempts to stop torture in Iraqi custody, it is clear their efforts were both patchy and half-hearted. In the worst incidents, one can only reasonably conclude that one set of torturers and thugs has been replaced by another.

From the original post:

Dahr Jamail is a rare human being. When he saw that there was a colossal tradgedy unfolding in Iraq, the extent of which barely being reported, he decided to go to work and take on the job of reporting from Iraq himself. Local artist Robert Shetterly has included Dahr Jamail in his stunning exhibit on Americans Who Tell the Truth.

It was a pleasure to meet Dahr Jamail. Please keep his website, http://dahrjamailiraq.com/, on your list of regular reads. It has essential information you will be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Please download and listen to this extraordinary podcast.

Welcome WERU listeners who heard the Thanksgiving Day special featuring Aaron Bell and Carly DelSignore of Tide Mill Farm in Edmunds. You may listen here or download the program for your iPod or other audio listening device using the link below (yep, for free).

This video is a slightly edited 68-minute version of the Thursday November 19, 2009 luncheon talk, Sharing the Burdens of Climate Change, by Professor Mike Howard of the University of Maine Department of Philosophy. [This post will be updated shortly to include the document files for Mike’s handout.]

The audio includes the complete 7pm event at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine on Park Street in Bangor. Play it here using the Flash player button or use the download link to save an mp3 file. Full-program video also is available for this event by clicking the above image. An audio-only podcast of the David Swanson noontime talk on Undoing the Imperial Presidency given at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus in Orono is available HERE in the previous post.

Please see the links below right for iTunes and RSS site feeds. And please leave us a comment with your reaction to these remarkable programs. Thank you to David Swanson for being on top of his game during our stop on his grueling tour.

This audio podcast features one of two appearances by David Swanson in the Bangor-Orono area on Thursday November 5, 2009. It is the talk given at the Memorial Union on the University of Maine campus as part of the Thursday series sponsored by Marxist and Socialist Studies and the Maine Peace Action Committee.

David Swanson is introduced by U Maine Professor of History, Alex Grab.

Update Saturday 11/7:Audio and video of David Swanson’s 7pm program at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine in Bangor has posted at those links.

Post navigation

Like this site?

Please use this button to make secure donations using your own PayPal account or a major credit card. Donations to this site are to be considered gifts to the operators and are not tax deductible. The money will be used (in this order of priority) for (1) Site bandwidth cost; (2) Materials and equipment; (3) Costs associated with covering events. We pay a lot out of our own pockets to record the posted programs and events, and even to just have this site here. So please, if you like to have this resource, help it to exist.